I must confess, the headline grabbed my attention. "We're all in the advertising now" sort of speaks to me since I, well....I'm in the advertising business!
The article went into detail on how many consulting companies are adding marketing and advertising to their portfolio. It is the classic product extension move by companies such as IBM and Deloitte, and totally makes sense. Take an existing relationship and continue to offer more products and services. It isn't rocket science, and it is working.
Why are media companies not doing the same thing? I think any media company has the opportunity to leverage current customers and extend into new and different product lines. Newspapers might actually have a leg up on other media outlets; often deeper relationships plus a distribution network that is still an untapped resource at many newspaper locations.
I actually tweeted a story over a month ago from Ray Chelstowski from mediavillage.com titled "A Possible New Path for Newspapers" which outlined this very concept. The potential product offerings are substantial, and have enough potential to provide solid profits to have a stable business plan and could help supplement the continued tough model of modern journalism.
This new media outlet has at its fingertips all the media sales it does including its legacy product line and the full range of digital offerings. Additional opportunities could include:
--public relations
--native content for websites
--market research
--distribution
--billing
--collections
As is always the case, it will take some initial money invested to get a business model like this going. But it is a viable path for media companies struggling to find their way in this age.
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